A strange story—a legend rather—is persistently current among the
disciples of some great Himâlayan Gurus, and even among laymen, to the
effect that Gautama, the Prince of Kapilavastu, has never left the
terrestrial regions, though his body died and was burnt, and its relics
are preserved to this day. There is an oral tradition among the Chinese
Buddhists, and a written statement among the secret books of the Lamaists
of Tibet, as well as a tradition among the Âryans, that Gautama BUDDHA had
two doctrines: one for the masses and His lay disciples, the other for His
“elect,” the Arhats. His policy and after Him that of His Arhats was, it
appears, to refuse no one admission into the ranks of candidates for
Arhatship, but never to divulge the final mysteries except to those who
had proved themselves, during long years of probation, to be worthy of
Initiation. These once accepted were consecrated and initiated without
distinction of race, caste or wealth, as in the case of His western
successor. It is the Arhats who have set forth and allowed this tradition
to take root in the people’s mind, and it is the basis, also, of the later
dogma of Lamaic reincarnation or the succession of human Buddhas.
The little that can be said here upon the subject may or may not help to
guide the psychic student in the right direction. It being left to the
option and responsibility of the writer to tell the facts as she
_personally_ understood them, the blame for possible misconceptions
created must fall only upon her. She has been taught the doctrine, but it
was left to her sole intuition—as it is now left to the sagacity of the
reader—to group the mysterious and perplexing facts together. The
incomplete statements herein given are fragments of what is contained in
certain secret volumes, but it is not lawful to divulge the details.
The esoteric version of the mystery given in the secret volumes may be
told very briefly. The Buddhists have always stoutly denied that their
Buddha was, as alleged by the Brâhmans, an Avatâra of Vishnu in the same
sense as a man is an incarnation of his Karmic ancestor. They deny it
partly, perhaps, because the esoteric meaning of the term “Mahâ Vishnu” is
not known to them in its full, impersonal, and general meaning. There is a
mysterious Principle in Nature called “Mahâ Vishnu,” which is not the God
of that name, but a principle which contains Bîja, the seed of Avatârism
or, in other words, is the potency and cause of such divine incarnations.
All the World‐Saviours, the Bodhisattvas and the Avatâras, are the trees
of salvation grown out from the one seed, the Bîja or “Mahâ Vishnu.”
Whether it be called Âdi‐Buddha (Primeval Wisdom) or Mahâ Vishnu, it is
all the same. Understood esoterically, Vishnu is both Saguna and Nirguna
(with and without attributes). In the first aspect, Vishnu is the object
of exoteric worship and devotion; in the second, as Nirguna, he is the
culmination of the totality of spiritual wisdom in the
Universe—Nirvâna,(647) in short—and has as worshippers all philosophical
minds. In this esoteric sense the Lord BUDDHA _was_ an incarnation of Mahâ
Vishnu.
This is from the philosophical and purely spiritual standpoint. From the
plane of illusion, however, as one would say, or from the terrestrial
standpoint, those initiated _know_ that He was a direct incarnation of one
of the primeval “Seven Sons of Light” who are to be found in every
Theogony—the Dhyân Chohans whose mission it is, from one eternity (æon) to
the other, to watch over the spiritual welfare of the regions under their
care. This has been already enunciated in _Esoteric Buddhism_.
One of the greatest mysteries of speculative and philosophical
Mysticism—and it is one of the mysteries now to be disclosed—is the _modus
operandi_ in the degrees of such hypostatic transferences. As a matter of
course, divine as well as human incarnations must remain a closed book to
the theologian as much as to the physiologist, unless the esoteric
teachings be accepted and become the religion of the world. This teaching
may never be fully explained to an unprepared public; but one thing is
certain and may be said now: that between the dogma of a newly‐created
soul for each new birth, and the physiological assumption of a temporary
animal soul, there lies the vast region of Occult teaching(648) with its
logical and reasonable demonstrations, the links of which may all be
traced in logical and philosophical sequence in nature.
This “Mystery” is found, for him who understands its right meaning, in the
dialogue between Krishna and Arjuna, in the _Bhagavad Gita_, chapter iv.
Says the Avatâra:
Many births of mine have passed, as also of yours, O Arjuna! All
those I know, but you do not know yours, O harasser of your
enemies.
Although I am unborn, with exhaustless Âtmâ, and am the Lord of
all that is; yet, taking up the domination of my nature I am born
by the power of illusion.(649)
Whenever, O son of Bhârata, there is decline of Dharma [the right
law] and the rise of Adharma [the opposite of Dharma] there I
manifest myself.
For the salvation of the good and the destruction of wickedness,
for the establishment of the law, _I am born_ in every yuga.
Whoever comprehends truly my divine birth and action, he, O
Arjuna, having abandoned the body does not receive re‐birth; he
comes to me.
Thus, all the Avatâras are one and the same: the Sons of their “Father,”
in a direct descent and line, the “Father,” or one of the seven Flames
becoming, for the time being, the Son, and these two being one—in
Eternity. What is the Father? Is it the absolute Cause of all?—the
fathomless Eternal? No; most decidedly. It is Kâranâtmâ, the “Causal Soul”
which, in its general sense, is called by the Hindus Îshvara, the Lord,
and by Christians, “God,” the One and Only. From the standpoint of unity
it is so; but then the lowest of the Elementals could equally be viewed in
such case as the “One and Only.” Each human being has, moreover, his own
divine Spirit or personal God. That divine Entity or Flame from which
Buddhi emanates stands in the same relation to man, though on a lower
plane, as the Dhyâni‐Buddha to his human Buddha. Hence monotheism and
polytheism are not irreconcilable; they exist in Nature.
Truly, “for the salvation of the good and the destruction of wickedness,”
the personalities known as Gautama, Shankara, Jesus and a few others were
born each in his age, as declared—“I am born in every Yuga”—and they were
all born through the same Power.
There is a great mystery in such incarnations and they are outside and
beyond the cycle of general re‐births. Rebirths may be divided into three
classes: the divine incarnations called Avatâras; those of Adepts who give
up Nirvâna for the sake of helping on humanity—the Nirmânakâyas; and the
natural succession of rebirths for all—the common law. The Avatâra is an
appearance, one which may be termed a special illusion within the natural
illusion that reigns on the planes under the sway of that power, Mâyâ; the
Adept is re‐born consciously, at his will and pleasure;(650) the units of
the common herd unconsciously follow the great law of dual evolution.
What _is_ an Avatâra? for the term before being used ought to be well
understood. It is a descent of the manifested Deity—whether under the
specific name of Shiva, Vishnu, or Âdi‐Buddha—into an illusive form of
individuality, an appearance which to men on this illusive plane is
objective, but is not so in sober fact. That illusive form, having neither
past nor future, because it had neither previous incarnation nor will have
subsequent rebirths, has naught to do with Karma, which has therefore no
hold on it.
Gautama BUDDHA was born an Avatâra in one sense. But this, in view of
unavoidable objections on dogmatic grounds, necessitates explanation.
There is a great difference between an Avatâra and a Jîvanmukta: one, as
already stated, is an illusive appearance, Karma‐less, and having never
before incarnated; and the other, the Jîvanmukta, is one who obtains
Nirvâna by his individual merits. To this expression again an
uncompromising, philosophical Vedântin would object. He might say that as
the condition of the Avatâra and the Jîvanmukta are one and the same
state, no amount of personal merit, in howsoever many incarnations, can
lead its possessor to Nirvâna. Nirvâna, he would say, is actionless; how
can, then, any action lead to it? It is neither a result nor a cause, but
an ever‐present, eternal _Is_, as Nâgasena defined it. Hence it can have
no relation to, or concern with, action, merit, or demerit, since these
are subject to Karma. All this is very true, but still to our mind there
is an important difference between the two. An Avatâra _is_; a Jîvanmukta
_becomes_ one. If the state of the two is identical, not so are the causes
which lead to it. An Avatâra is a descent of a God into an illusive form;
a Jîvanmukta, who may have passed through numberless incarnations and may
have accumulated merit in them, certainly does not become a Nirvânî
because of that merit, but only because of the Karma generated by it,
which leads and guides him in the direction of the Guru who will initiate
him into the mystery of Nirvâna and who alone can help him to reach this
abode.
The Shâstras say that from our works alone we obtain Moksha, and if we
take no pains there will be no gain and we shall be neither assisted nor
benefited by Deity [the Mahâ‐Guru]. Therefore it is maintained that
Gautama, though an Avatâra in one sense, is a true human Jîvanmukta, owing
his position to his personal merit, and thus more than an Avatâra. It was
his personal merit that enabled him to achieve Nirvâna.
Of the voluntary and conscious incarnations of Adepts there are two
types—those of Nirmânakâyas, and those undertaken by the probationary
chelâs who are on their trial.
The greatest, as the most puzzling mystery of the first type lies in the
fact, that such re‐birth in a human body of the personal Ego of some
particular Adept—when it has been dwelling in the Mâyâvi or the Kâma Rûpa,
and remaining in the Kâma Loka—may happen even when his “Higher
Principles” are in the state of Nirvâna.(651) Let it be understood that
the above expressions are used for popular purposes, and therefore that
what is written does not deal with this deep and mysterious question from
the _highest_ plane, that of absolute spirituality, nor again from the
highest philosophical point of view, comprehensible but to the very few.
It must not be supposed that anything can go into Nirvâna which is not
eternally there; but human intellect in conceiving the Absolute must put
It as the highest term in an indefinite series. If this be borne in mind a
great deal of misconception will be avoided. The content of this spiritual
evolution is the material on various planes with which the Nirvânî was in
contact prior to his attainment of Nirvâna. The plane on which this is
true, being in the series of illusive planes, is undoubtedly not the
highest. Those who search for that must go to the right source of study,
the teachings of the _Upanishads_, and must go in the right spirit. Here
we attempt only to indicate the direction in which the search is to be
made, and in showing a few of the mysterious Occult possibilities we do
not bring our readers actually to the goal. The ultimate truth can be
communicated only from Guru to initiated pupil.
Having said so much, the statement still will and must appear
incomprehensible, if not absurd, to many. Firstly, to all those who are
unfamiliar with the doctrine of the manifold nature and various aspects of
the human Monad; and secondly to those who view the septenary division of
the human entity from a too materialistic standpoint. Yet the intuitional
Occultist, who has studied thoroughly the mysteries of Nirvâna—who knows
it to be identical with Parabrahman, and hence unchangeable, eternal and
no Thing but the Absolute All—will seize the possibility of the fact. They
know that while a Dharmakâya—a Nirvânî “without remains,” as our
Orientalists have translated it, being absorbed into that Nothingness,
which is the one real, because Absolute, Consciousness—cannot be said to
return to incarnation on Earth, the Nirvânî being no longer a he, a she,
or even an it, the Nirmânakâya—or he who has obtained Nirvâna “with
remains,” _i.e._, who is clothed in a subtle body, which makes him
impervious to all outward impressions and to every mental feeling, and in
whom the notion of his Ego has not entirely ceased—can do so. Again, every
Eastern Occultist is aware of the fact that there are two kinds of
Nirmânakâyas—the natural, and the assumed; that the former is the name or
epithet given to the condition of a high ascetic, or Initiate, who has
reached a stage of bliss second only to Nirvâna; while the latter means
the self‐sacrifice of one who voluntarily gives up the absolute Nirvâna,
in order to help humanity and be still doing it good, or, in other words,
to save his fellow‐creatures by guiding them. It may be objected that the
Dharmakâya, being a Nirvânî or Jîvanmukta, can have no “remains” left
behind him after death, for having attained that state from which no
further incarnations are possible, there is no need for him of a subtle
body, or of the individual Ego that reincarnates from one birth to
another, and that therefore the latter disappears of logical necessity; to
this it is answered: it is so for all exoteric purposes and as a general
law. But the case with which we are dealing is an exceptional one, and its
realization lies within the Occult powers of the high Initiate, who,
before entering into the state of Nirvâna, can cause his “remains”
(sometimes, though not very well, called his Mâyâvi Rûpa), to remain
behind,(652) whether he is to become a Nirvânî, or to find himself in a
lower state of bliss.
Next, there are cases—rare, yet more frequent than one would be disposed
to expect—which are the voluntary and conscious reincarnations of
Adepts(653) on their trial. Every man has an Inner, a “Higher Self,” and
also an Astral Body. But few are those who, outside the higher degrees of
Adeptship, can guide the latter, or any of the principles that animate it,
when once death has closed their short terrestrial life. Yet such
guidance, or their transference from the dead to a living body, is not
only possible, but is of frequent occurrence, according to Occult and
Kabalistic teachings. The degrees of such power of course vary greatly. To
mention but three: the lowest of these degrees would allow an Adept, who
has been greatly trammelled during life in his study and in the use of his
powers, to choose after death another body in which he could go on with
his interrupted studies, though ordinarily he would lose in it every
remembrance of his previous incarnation. The next degree permits him, in
addition to this, to transfer the memory of his past life to his new body;
while the highest has hardly any limits in the exercise of that wonderful
faculty.
As an instance of an Adept who enjoyed the first mentioned power some
mediæval Kabalists cite a well‐known personage of the fifteenth
century—Cardinal de Cusa; Karma, due to his wonderful devotion to Esoteric
study and the _Kabalah_, led the suffering Adept to seek intellectual
recuperation and rest from ecclesiastical tyranny in the body of
Copernicus. _Se non e vero e ben trovato_; and the perusal of the lives of
the two men might easily lead a believer in such powers to a ready
acceptance of the alleged fact. The reader having at his command the means
to do so is asked to turn to the formidable folio in Latin of the
fifteenth century, called _De Docta Ignorantia_, written by the Cardinal
de Cusa, in which all the theories and hypotheses—all the ideas—of
Copernicus are found as the key‐notes to the discoveries of the great
astronomer.(654) Who was this extraordinarily learned Cardinal? The son of
a poor boatman, owing all his career, his Cardinal’s hat, and the
reverential awe rather than friendship of the Popes Eugenius IV., Nicholas
V., and Pius II., to the extraordinary learning which seemed innate in
him, since he had studied nowhere till comparatively late in life. De Cusa
died in 1473; moreover, his best works were written before he was forced
to enter orders—to escape persecution. Nor did the Adept escape it.
In the voluminous work of the Cardinal above‐quoted is found a very
suggestive sentence, the authorship of which has been variously attributed
to Pascal, to Cusa himself, and to the _Zohar_, and which belongs by right
to the Books of Hermes:
The world is an infinite sphere, whose centre is everywhere and
whose circumference is nowhere.
This is changed by some into: “The centre being nowhere, and the
circumference everywhere,” a rather heretical idea for a Cardinal, though
perfectly orthodox from a Kabalistic standpoint.
The theory of rebirth must be set forth by Occultists, and then applied to
special cases. The right comprehension of this psychic fact is based upon
a correct view of that group of celestial Beings who are universally
called the seven Primeval Gods or Angels—our Dhyân Chohans—the “Seven
Primeval Rays” or Powers, adopted later on by the Christian Religion as
the “Seven Angels of the Presence.” Arûpa, formless, at the upper rung of
the ladder of Being, materializing more and more as they descend in the
scale of objectivity and form, ending in the grossest and most imperfect
of the Hierarchy, man—it is the former purely spiritual group that is
pointed out to us, in our Occult teaching, as the nursery and fountain‐
head of human beings. Therein germinates that consciousness which is the
earliest manifestation from causal Consciousness—the Alpha and the Omega
of divine being and life for ever. And as it proceeds downward through
every phase of existence descending through man, through animal and plant,
it ends its descent only in the mineral. It is represented by the double
triangle—the most mysterious and the most suggestive of all mystic signs,
for it is a double glyph, embracing spiritual and physical consciousness
and life, the former triangle running upwards, and the lower downwards,
both interlaced, and showing the various planes of the twice‐seven modes
of consciousness, the fourteen spheres of existence, the Lokas of the
Brâhmans.
The reader may now be able to obtain a clearer comprehension of the whole
thing. He will also see what is meant by the “Watchers,” there being one
placed as the Guardian or Regent over each of the seven divisions or
regions of the earth, according to old traditions, as there is one to
watch over and guide every one of the fourteen worlds or Lokas.(655) But
it is not with any of these that we are at present concerned, but with the
“Seven Breaths,” so‐called, that furnish man with his immortal Monad in
his cyclic pilgrimage.
The Commentary on the _Book of Dzyan_ says:
_Descending on his region first as Lord of Glory, the Flame (or Breath),
having called into conscious being the highest of the Emanations of that
special region, ascends from it again to Its primeval seat, whence It
watches __ over and guides Its countless Beams (Monads). It chooses as Its
Avatâras only those who had the Seven Virtues in them_(_656_)_ in their
previous incarnation. As for the rest, It overshadows each with one of Its
countless beams.... Yet even the __“__beam__”__ is a part of the Lord of
Lords._(657)
The septenary principle in man—who can be regarded as dual only as
concerns psychic manifestation on this gross earthly plane—was known to
all antiquity, and may be found in every ancient Scripture. The Egyptians
knew and taught it, and their division of principles is in every point a
counterpart of the Âryan Secret Teaching. It is thus given in _Isis
Unveiled_:
In the Egyptian notions, as in those of all other faiths founded
on philosophy, man was not merely ... a union of soul and body: he
was a trinity when Spirit was added to it. Besides, that doctrine
made him consist of Kha (body), Khaba (astral form or shadow), Ka
(animal soul or life‐principle), Ba (the higher soul), and Akh
(terrestrial intelligence). They had also a sixth principle, named
Sah (or mummy), but the functions of this one commenced after the
death of the body.(658)
The seventh principle being of course the highest, uncreated Spirit was
generically called Osiris, therefore every deceased person became
Osirified—or an Osiris—after death.
But in addition to reiterating the old ever‐present fact of reincarnation
and Karma—not as taught by the Spiritists, but as by the most Ancient
Science in the world—Occultists must teach cyclic and evolutionary
reincarnation: that kind of re‐birth, mysterious and still
incomprehensible to many who are ignorant of the world’s history, which
was cautiously mentioned in _Isis Unveiled_. A general re‐birth for every
individual with interlude of Kâma Loka and Devachan, and a cyclic
conscious reincarnation with a grand and divine object for the few. Those
great characters who tower like giants in the history of mankind like
Siddârtha BUDDHA and Jesus in the realm of the spiritual, and Alexander
the Macedonian and Napoleon the Great in the realm of physical conquests
are but the reflected images of human types which had existed—not ten
thousand years before, as cautiously put forward in _Isis Unveiled_, but
for millions of consecutive years from the beginning of the Manvantara.
For—with the exception of real Avatâras, as above explained—they are the
same unbroken Rays (Monads), each respectively of its own special Parent‐
Flame—called Devas, Dhyân Chohans, or Dhyâni‐Buddhas, or again, Planetary
Angels, etc.—shining in æonic eternity as their prototypes. It is in their
image that some men are born, and when some specific humanitarian object
is in view, the latter are hypostatically animated by their divine
prototypes reproduced again and again by the mysterious Powers that
control and guide the destinies of our world.
No more could be said at the time when _Isis Unveiled_ was written; hence
the statement was limited to the single remark that
There is no prominent character in all the annals of sacred or
profane history whose prototype we cannot find in the half
fictitious and half real traditions of bygone religions and
mythologies. As the star, glimmering at an immeasurable distance
above our heads, in the boundless immensity of the sky, reflects
itself in the smooth waters of a lake, so does the imagery of men
of the antediluvian ages reflect itself in the periods we can
embrace in a historical retrospect.
But now that so many publications have been brought out, stating much of
the doctrine, and several of them giving many an erroneous view, this
vague allusion may be amplified and explained. Not only does this
statement apply to prominent characters in history in general, but also to
men of genius, to every remarkable man of the age, who soars beyond the
common herd with some abnormally developed special capacity in him,
leading to the progress and good of mankind. Each is a reincarnation of an
individuality that has gone before him with capacities in the same line,
bringing thus as a dowry to his new form that strong and easily re‐
awakened capacity or quality which had been fully developed in him in his
preceding birth. Very often they are ordinary mortals, the Egos of natural
men in the course of their cyclic development.
But it is with “special cases” that we are now concerned. Let us suppose
that a person during his cycle of incarnations is thus selected for
special purposes—the vessel being sufficiently clean—by his personal God,
the Fountain‐head (on the plane of the manifested) of his Monad, who thus
becomes his in‐dweller. That God, his own prototype or “Father in Heaven,”
is, in one sense, not only the image in which he, the spiritual man, is
made, but in the case we are considering, it is that spiritual, individual
Ego himself. This is a case of permanent, life‐long Theophania. Let us
bear in mind that this is neither Avatârism, as it is understood in
Brâhmanical Philosophy, nor is the man thus selected a Jîvanmukta or
Nirvânî, but that it is a wholly exceptional case in the realm of
Mysticism. The man may or may not have been an Adept in his previous
lives; he is so far, and simply, an extremely pure and spiritual
individual—or one who was all that in his preceding birth, if the vessel
thus selected is that of a newly‐born infant. In this case, after the
physical translation of such a saint or Bodhisattva, his astral principles
cannot be subjected to a natural dissolution like those of any common
mortal. They remain in our sphere and within human attraction and reach;
and thus it is that not only a Buddha, a Shankarâchârya, or a Jesus can be
said to animate several persons at one and the same time, but even the
principles of a high Adept may be animating the outward tabernacles of
common mortals.
A certain Ray (principle) from Sanat Kumâra spiritualized (animated)
Pradyumna, the son of Krishna during the great Mahâbhârata period, while
at the same time, he, Sanat Kumâra, gave spiritual instruction to King
Dhritarâshtra. Moreover, it is to be remembered that Sanat‐Kumâra is “an
eternal youth of sixteen,” dwelling in Jana Loka, his own sphere or
spiritual state.
Even in ordinary _mediumistic_ life, so‐called, it is pretty well
ascertained that while the body is acting—even though only mechanically—or
resting in one place, its astral double may be appearing and acting
independently in another, and very often distant place. This is quite a
common occurrence in mystic life and history, and if this be so with
ecstatics, Seers and Mystics of every description, why cannot the same
thing happen on a higher and more spiritually developed plane of
existence? Admit the possibility on the lower psychic plane, then why not
on a higher plane? In the cases of higher Adeptship, when the body is
entirely at the command of the Inner Man, when the Spiritual Ego is
completely reünited with its seventh principle even during the life‐time
of the personality, and the Astral Man or personal Ego has become so
purified that he has gradually assimilated all the qualities and
attributes of the middle nature (Buddhi and Manas in their terrestrial
aspect) that personal Ego substitutes itself, so to say, for the spiritual
Higher Self, and is thenceforth capable of living an independent life on
earth; when corporeal death takes place the following mysterious event
often happens. As a Dharmakâya, a Nirvânî “without remains” entirely free
from terrestrial admixture, the Spiritual Ego cannot return to reincarnate
on earth. But in such cases, it is affirmed, the personal Ego of even a
Dharmakâya can remain in our sphere as a whole, and return to incarnation
on earth if need be. For now it can no longer be subject, like the astral
remains of any ordinary man, to gradual dissolution in the Kâma Loka (the
_limbus_ or purgatory of the Roman Catholic, and the “Summer‐land” of the
Spiritualist); it cannot die a second death, as such disintegration is
called by Proclus.(659) It has become too holy and pure, no longer by
reflected but its own natural light and spirituality, either to sleep in
the unconscious slumber of a lower Nirvânic state, or to be dissolved like
any ordinary astral shell and disappear in its entirety.
But in that condition known as the Nirmânakâya [the Nirvânî “with
remains,”] he can still help humanity.
“Let me suffer and bear the sins of all [be reincarnated unto new misery]
but let the world be saved!” was said by Gautama BUDDHA: an exclamation
the real meaning of which is little understood now by his followers. “If I
will that he tarry till I come, what is that to thee?”(660) asks the
astral Jesus of Peter. “Till I come” means “till I am reincarnated again”
in a physical body. Yet the Christ of the old crucified body could truly
say: “I am with my Father and one with Him,” which did not prevent the
astral from taking a form again nor John from tarrying indeed till his
Master had come; nor hinder John from failing to recognize him when he did
come, or from then opposing him. But in the Church that remark generated
the absurd idea of the millennium or chiliasm, in its physical sense.
Since then the “Man of Sorrows” has returned perchance, more than once,
unknown to, and undiscovered by, his blind followers. Since then also,
this grand “Son of God” has been incessantly and most cruelly crucified
daily and hourly by the Churches founded in his name. But the Apostles,
only half‐initiated, failed to tarry for their Master, and not recognizing
him, spurned him every time he returned.(661)